Someone mentioned Blackadder's ending. It is something about the best British shows that when they are outrageously funny or charming, the tragic parts are absolutely devastating. The Vicar of Dibley's Africa/AIDS fundraiser sticks out in my mind, as does the death of Assumpta in Ballykissangel.

Is anyone else sad? It is a great show. I've had a crush on Rose Byrne for yearsHer character Ellen sounds American but Roses real accent is very heavy Australian.. can barely understand her when she talks

Only skilled actors/ actresses can pull that off

McNulty & Stringer are the same & Housecan barely understand their real life accents

Bhruic:STTNG: They total fubared this ending. The whole premise was that the Enterprise "created" the event that was causing the time issues (I forget what they called it in-show). The "event" was going backwards in time from that point. And yet when the Enterprise goes to investigate that spot, it's not there. That's impossible based on the way they defined it - an event travelling backwards in time. And then, to make matters worse, they go back and the event is there after it's been created So we have something that travels backwards through time that isn't there when they go to see it at point X - 1, is created at point X, and then is visible at point X + 1. That completely messes up the basic premise they are using to construct the dramatic tension of the show.

First of all, time travel stories almost never make sense. But the whole thing was a construct created by Q to test Picard again. So all the time travel rules that never made any sense anyway, don't really apply because it was all bullshiat made up by Q. And that sounds like a cop out but it made the characters learn more about each other and all that shiat.

DeaH:Or, as I like to call it, throwing anvils at the audience. Look, I have no tolerance for anyone who wanted Jerry and Elaine to end up together (frankly, I had no idea that such people existed before this thread), but that ending was an act of contempt to those of us that watched the show from the beginning. Frankly, I would have been happier with Kramer dead, George in jail, Elaine old and alone with her cats, and Jerry rich as Croesus from making fun of his closest friends. Sure, it's in the nose, but a heck of a lot more subtle than trying and jailing them.

Seriously, that ending still pisses me off.

They really should have just done an ordinary episode that was an homage to the true "show about nothing" era. Christ, they could have just done an hour long episode set entirely at Monk's where they just talk about boring day-to-day stuff and rolled credits when they asked for the check.

Sybarite:The finale of Seinfeld was mostly a lame clip show. Larry David could have done something groundbreaking, but opted instead for a boring and unfunny retrospective. The only two series that have ever had a good clip show are South Park and Community.

The Clerks cartoon had a stellar clip show. It was the second episode and consisted almost entirely of flashbacks to the first two episodes (yes you read that right).

/It was also the first to actually air, not that anybody watched it when it was on TV.

Mugato:Rwa2play: See the truckloads of money "The Avengers" is getting and the truckloads "TDKR" will get and there's your answer. Marvel's going to have sequels for all of their franchises (that they control) including "The Avengers." DC's way behind the 8-ball when it comes to their characters with the only one on the horizon is "The Man of Steel" and IIRC a Green Lantern sequel a couple of years from now.

Right, which is why I'd go with the built in audience that Smallville had and make sequels from that. Plus they set up other DC heroes in that show, sort of the equivalent of Marvel setting up the Avengers in the standalone movies. So less origin stories and more just getting down to business, which is what the Avengers had going for it. They had to set up the team but they didn't have to set up each individual character again.

Point taken. Considering what ontariolighting said about Welling, I'm guessing there was very little chance of the entire cast of the series going into the movie.

Yanks_RSJ:DeaH: Or, as I like to call it, throwing anvils at the audience. Look, I have no tolerance for anyone who wanted Jerry and Elaine to end up together (frankly, I had no idea that such people existed before this thread), but that ending was an act of contempt to those of us that watched the show from the beginning. Frankly, I would have been happier with Kramer dead, George in jail, Elaine old and alone with her cats, and Jerry rich as Croesus from making fun of his closest friends. Sure, it's in the nose, but a heck of a lot more subtle than trying and jailing them.

Seriously, that ending still pisses me off.

They really should have just done an ordinary episode that was an homage to the true "show about nothing" era. Christ, they could have just done an hour long episode set entirely at Monk's where they just talk about boring day-to-day stuff and rolled credits when they asked for the check.

I like to think of the "Seinfeld Reunion" story arc on Curb Your Enthusiasm as the actual end of the show.

Well I don't know, I was being generous. It was sort of a disaster but you suggested that they had more plans for it, which was surprising.

DC doesn't really have too much going for it. The Wonder Woman tv show was canceled before the first commercial break of the first episode. Aquaman is a running joke. Batman is presumably ending with this film so we'll have to see young Bruce's mother's pearls fall down yet again if he's to come back. I don't know, Hawkman?

I enjoyed Smallville the most during the high school years.The freak of the weeks were usually enjoyable as well as Clark & Lex'ssomewhat testy friendship. Johnathan & Martha also elevated the show then too.And that is when Lionel was so evil.

After that it got so complicated and serious. The settings were turning darker and darker. I finished the series but it lost its joy sometime during season 4.

DC doesn't really have too much going for it. The Wonder Woman tv show was canceled before the first commercial break of the first episode. Aquaman is a running joke. Batman is presumably ending with this film so we'll have to see young Bruce's mother's pearls fall down yet again if he's to come back. I don't know, Hawkman?

Mugato:DC doesn't really have too much going for it. The Wonder Woman tv show was canceled before the first commercial break of the first episode. Aquaman is a running joke. Batman is presumably ending with this film so we'll have to see young Bruce's mother's pearls fall down yet again if he's to come back. I don't know, Hawkman?

Need a Wonder Twins movie.Needs someone who knows how to abuse their powers to create it.

Bhruic:BSG: Well, it's all been said before. Angel Starbuck. "Humans" in history. Sufficient population to sustain a colony. Inability to interbreed with local inhabitants. Pointless sermonizing. Just a really, really bad ending to what started off as a really good show.

A couple of your points aren't right. I distinctly remember the doctor saying he'd found the grave of one of the local natives and somehow determined that they could interbreed. That's pretty improbable, so it would have been nice for them to suspect that they were somehow the remnants of a lost tribe or something, but it was explained.

Also, it's speculated that the human race once came close to extinction with as few at 1000 women of childbearing age at one point, so the number of survivors left by the end of the show isn't too small, even splitting them up into three camps.

thecpt:Scrubs deserves to at least be on that list. Yeah I know nobody watched it and they did that stupid extra season, but that was perfect payoff for fans. And a cover by peter gabriel isn't bad send-off music.

This. The Scrubs finale was a nice way to conclude the series, and it's best to pretend the 9th season didn't exist, because it's really more of a spin-off (they originally wanted to call it "Scrubs Med") than continuity.

I'd also drop Battlestar Galactica, Sopranos and Lost from this list, because their finales (and final seasons, honestly) were terrible ways to send the series out. And The Wire just barely gets by, because the finale was a nice end to a season that was quite inferior to the rest of the show.

In their place, I'd add The X-Files finale, which had the balls to keep the show mysterious despite offering some resolution to the story. I'd also add the Arrested Development finale, which perfectly tied up the show.

Seinfeld: The finale was designed to be a pie in the face for all of the people who watched the show but couldn't figure out that as much as we love the characters, they're all self-absorbed shallow New Yorkers. For those of us who did get it, Larry David has provided us years of comedy laughing at the people who thought the show should have ended with sentimental happy stuff like Elaine and Jerry getting married.

It's not an either/or. The idiots who thought the show should have ended with Elaine and Jerry getting married only showed up in like season five after the show had become a hit. However, the "let's judge these characters" thing was just so heavy-handed and shiatty. In real life, people like these never get judged or change. They go on blissfully through life being hung up on their first-world problems. They'd just show up at the diner and keep being inane until they were old. Thus why the Seinfeld reunion arc from Curb Your Enthusiasm feels like the REAL ending to that show.

See you really didn't get it. Even being judged didn't change them, that was for the audiences benefit. It was a greatest hits retrospective while pointing out how shallow and awful they really were when looked at outside their little universe. While sitting in the cell after the trial Jerry and George were discussing the bad button placement on Georges shirt. The same discussion they had in episode one.

Mugato:DC doesn't really have too much going for it. The Wonder Woman tv show was canceled before the first commercial break of the first episode. Aquaman is a running joke. Batman is presumably ending with this film so we'll have to see young Bruce's mother's pearls fall down yet again if he's to come back. I don't know, Hawkman?

The great irony of "Wonder Woman" is that Josh Whedon was going to do the movie and Cobie Smulders was going to be Diana. DC nixed Cobie as Diana and Josh went to Marvel.

The execs at DC and WB must be kicking themselves with steel-toed books with spikes at the tips over that one.

whizbangthedirtfarmer:Someone mentioned Blackadder's ending. It is something about the best British shows that when they are outrageously funny or charming, the tragic parts are absolutely devastating. The Vicar of Dibley's Africa/AIDS fundraiser sticks out in my mind, as does the death of Assumpta in Ballykissangel.

Seinfeld: The finale was designed to be a pie in the face for all of the people who watched the show but couldn't figure out that as much as we love the characters, they're all self-absorbed shallow New Yorkers. For those of us who did get it, Larry David has provided us years of comedy laughing at the people who thought the show should have ended with sentimental happy stuff like Elaine and Jerry getting married.

It's not an either/or. The idiots who thought the show should have ended with Elaine and Jerry getting married only showed up in like season five after the show had become a hit. However, the "let's judge these characters" thing was just so heavy-handed and shiatty. In real life, people like these never get judged or change. They go on blissfully through life being hung up on their first-world problems. They'd just show up at the diner and keep being inane until they were old. Thus why the Seinfeld reunion arc from Curb Your Enthusiasm feels like the REAL ending to that show.

See you really didn't get it. Even being judged didn't change them, that was for the audiences benefit. It was a greatest hits retrospective while pointing out how shallow and awful they really were when looked at outside their little universe. While sitting in the cell after the trial Jerry and George were discussing the bad button placement on Georges shirt. The same discussion they had in episode one.

No, I absolutely got it. You don't get that the Anvilicious "these people are BAAAAD and being punished" ending was just out of place with the rest of the show.

Then you mention the button placement thing, which has nothing at all to do with the rest of your point. Stick to trying to "get it" yourself, champ.

Eirik:mongbiohazard: Battlestar Galactica and its bullshiat copout ending? You have to be farking kidding me.

I stopped reading the list at that one. The single worst series ending I can think of. So bad, I can't even stomach re-watching the series again. Now that I know that they're going to eventually completely shiat on anything interesting that they do the whole series is spoiled for me.

And the final five Cyclons were such bullshiat. They should have just been random shmoes that nobody would have seen coming, but instead they had some kind of lame fan-service circle jerk. Fark that show.

I thought that ending was almost right, but it went a couple steps too far. They made a couple mis-steps that ruined it. The whole Starbuck thing was a problem. She should either have never come back (or never been killed) or having come back should have turned out to be a Cylon or something. Making her mystical ruined it a bit.

I actually didn't have a problem with them settling a primitive Earth and starting over from scratch. That not only seemed right on some level, but completely made some kind of BSG: 2010 impossible.

I don't really have a problem with finding a planet with some primitive life on it and settling down - even when setting aside the complete implausibility of interbreeding with an alien species.

I had a problem with the Gaius and Six hallucinations being farking ANGELS, Starbuck the White, and the explanation for everything being a blanket "god did it".

Of course, I also felt it ridiculously implausible that even if they all wanted to settle down together that they would jettison their ships in to the sun instead of utilizing them as the utterly invaluable resources they were, and using them to help start a new industrial base for their colony with their machine shops and etc. Their medical facilities... even space based communications and weather observation would have been invaluable.

The whole thing just reeked of them having written themselves into corners the last two seasons - and then taking the ultimate copout to wrap the whole thing up.

MorganFreeman:Breaking Bad. It hasn't aired yet, but I'm confident it will crush pretty much all of these.

It's like we share the same brain! I SO agree with this!

I would have expected the Dexter finale to kick ass. However, if the same people write it that are responsible for the debachle that was the last season, all bets are off.

Although I loved me some LOST, and was one of the 12 people who loved the finale, I gotta say that Six Feet Under's ending was sheer, unadalterated brilliance.

Actually think they could have swapped out the Sex and the City finale for LOST: (Charlotte gets a baby, Miranda does 'love', and Samantha actually opens her self up to something more than great sex. And we learned Big's name. A very satisfying and well done series ending. I try to forget that Sex and the City 2 existed so one of my favorite shows isn't forever tainted by that crap)

If this were about actual season finales rather than series finales, none of those would be on there. "Who Shot Mr. Burns" pt. 1 would have to be on the list, and Lost's 1st season finale was way better than it's final one.

DeaH:Frankly, I would have been happier with Kramer dead, George in jail, Elaine old and alone with her cats, and Jerry rich as Croesus from making fun of his closest friends. Sure, it's in the nose, but a heck of a lot more subtle than trying and jailing them.

Seinfeld: The finale was designed to be a pie in the face for all of the people who watched the show but couldn't figure out that as much as we love the characters, they're all self-absorbed shallow New Yorkers. For those of us who did get it, Larry David has provided us years of comedy laughing at the people who thought the show should have ended with sentimental happy stuff like Elaine and Jerry getting married.

It's not an either/or. The idiots who thought the show should have ended with Elaine and Jerry getting married only showed up in like season five after the show had become a hit. However, the "let's judge these characters" thing was just so heavy-handed and shiatty. In real life, people like these never get judged or change. They go on blissfully through life being hung up on their first-world problems. They'd just show up at the diner and keep being inane until they were old. Thus why the Seinfeld reunion arc from Curb Your Enthusiasm feels like the REAL ending to that show.

That was the point of the finale -- using fiction to put people on trial for being jerks.

Yeah, that's the problem. The finale had way too much of a point for a show that was pretty farking trivial and pointless when it came down to it.

I chalk that ending up to LD being self-deprecating about the whole show and its success, but even he admitted that the Seinfeld arc on Curb was sort of a makeup for the original finale.

And in typically LD fashion, it's was also a hugely complex and brilliant meta joke which went over many people's heads.

Sometime, in the far distant future, the finale of The Simpsons will be the #1 finale. The plot or quality won't matter, just the fact that someone finally drove a stake through the heart of that walking-dead corpse of a once great show will rocket it to #1 on the list.

MASH is the epitome of "shows that went on too long", and that rotten series finale highlighted everything that went wrong with the show from the moment Frank Burns left, which should have been the end.

jj325:MASH is the epitome of "shows that went on too long", and that rotten series finale highlighted everything that went wrong with the show from the moment Frank Burns left, which should have been the end.